European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies ISSN: 2559 - 7194 ISSN-L:2501 - 7194 Available on-line at: www.oapub.org/lit Volume 1 │ Issue 1 │ 2017 doi: 10.5281/zenodo.1065548 THEMATICS IN CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS A CASE STUDY OF A DIALOGUE Justine Bakuuroi Department of English, University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana Abstract: Conversation Analysis (CA), a research tradition that grew out of ethnomethodolgy has some unique methodological features. It studies the social organization of conversation or talk-in-interaction by a detailed inspection of tape recordings and transcriptions made from such recordings. In doing conversation analysis, the analyst identifies a prevailing theme or object around which a conversation is centered. He then goes on to extrapolate how this chosen theme is constructed in the conversation. This paper explores the theme of identity and power construction in the dialogue between two personalities - Vic and the Unknown Lady. It uses two theories-the speech act theory and the relevance theory. There are hardly any prescriptions to be followed if one is to do a good C“ . “ chosen theme, which a conversation analyst bases his exploration on, is termed in the terminology of Schenkein 1 “tkinson 1 , as a sketch of an analytic mentality . In the words of Heritage and 4, The central goal of conversation analytic research is the description and explication of the competences that ordinary speakers use and rely on in participating in intelligible, socially organized interaction”. This paper has thus attempted to do a sketch of an analytic mentality and explicate the competences of the two conversationalists-Vic and the Unknown Lady- in their admonishing of the dominant theme of identity and power construction in the dialogue between them. Among other findings, the study notes significantly that identity construction involves inclusionary and exclusionary processes in conversational interactions and that words are weapons. The study establishes the fact that power indeed creates identity and that language draws boundaries, making it implicative that identity presupposes similarities and differences. Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved 43 Justine Bakuuro THEMATICS IN CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS - A CASE STUDY OF A DIALOGUE Keywords: conversation analysis (CA), transcriptions, identity, dialogue, power construction, conversationalist 1. Introduction During the 1960s and 1970s, conversation analysis emerged from within sociology and in particular from a small group of sociologists who were dissatisfied with what they saw as the excessive quantitative formalism in their discipline. These researchers were influenced in significant ways by a small group of social scientists who had developed an approach which they coined ethnomedology . This methodological outlook was very skeptical about the fact that when social scientists turn to a particular problem or group of people and start studying them, they bring certain pre-conceived ideas about what they are looking at to the analysis which influences their classification and coding procedures. Instead, ethnomethodologists focus on peoples own ideas and understandings about whatever it is they are doing and it is these understandings which should guide the analysis. Ethnomethodlogy can be defined as the study of ethnic the participants own methods of production and interpretation of social interaction. Ethnomethodology focuses on providing a rational analysis of the structures, procedures and strategies that people themselves use when they are making sense out of their own everyday world and their actions and interactions within it. Conversation analysis, or as it is sometimes known, the study of talk-in-interaction , takes to heart the ethnomethodological focus on what people actually say and do. The analysis centered on a process of first identifying elements and structure in naturally occurring conversation and then through a detailed procedure of micro-analysis, identifying participant-oriented evidence for the models, concepts and ideas that people use. In a sense, CA is concerned with uncovering the implicit ideas and understanding people possess and use in their own everyday interactions. The purpose of this research is to find out how the themes of identity/ power construction as well as gender ideologies are explicated in the conversational dialogue between Vic and the Unknown Lady. The analysis is based only on the transcribed recording of the dialogue (scope of the research). Characteristic of every transcribed recording, some parts of the dialogue are missing due to inaudibility of voice of the speakers .This however does not affect the line of explication of the themes or concepts under study herein. For viewing / downloading the full article, please access the following link: https://oapub.org/lit/index.php/EJLLL/article/view/9 European Journal of Literature, Language and Linguistics Studies - Volume 1 │ Issue 1 │ 2017 44